


come in out of the cold

by ninemoons42



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Artist Steve Rogers, Declarations Of Love, First Kiss, First Time, Love Confessions, M/M, Snow Day, Snowed In, Writer Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-08
Updated: 2015-01-08
Packaged: 2018-03-06 17:19:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3142457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers is working through what should be a snow day, but then he opens the door to Bucky Barnes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	come in out of the cold

_\- reporting more snow and rapidly falling temperatures throughout the night. Residents are advised to stay indoors._

Steve sighed, and turned the volume down on the radio, and reached for another blanket: he was pretty sure he’d pulled most of the blankets in his closet out of storage, even the ones that smelled a little too much like mothballs, and those blankets were even now colonizing what little open space he had in his cramped two-room flat. Blankets on his bed (on which he’d piled the last of his clean comforters, two deep and still smelling like laundry sheets and dryers), blankets on the creaky couch, blankets on the kitchen counter. 

He pulled one of the blankets around his shoulders and shuffled back towards his desk. A breath of warmth next to his feet, next to his knees, and he still didn’t know why Sharon had space heaters but he was happy to have them anyway – she’d left a couple of units with him when she moved back home, and now he had them cranked almost all the way up. If it hadn’t been for those space heaters he wouldn’t have been able to keep working through the week, as the snow began to fall in thicker and thicker flurries.

How the ink sitting in its bottle on his desk hadn’t frozen, he had no idea – but he was sort of grateful he could still work with it, and in a few moments he’d fallen into one of his favorite places, surrounded by the concentration of a brush drawing graceful curves on paper. Quiet absorption, and the distant voices on the radio, and the steady rhythm of darkening lines.

He put the brush down and flexed his hand, tried to shake off the beginnings of a cramp.

A loud knock on his door.

Steve didn’t fall off his chair, but he did make a shocked sound, and he did feel like he wanted to run, only it was snowing and freezing outside and he wasn’t even dressed for the weather, not even in three layers and thermal long johns.

He forced himself to take a deep breath, and then another, trying to calm the frantic jackrabbiting of his heartbeat.

Another knock. Words, this time, clearly audible through the door: “Steve, come on, open this fucking door, it’s me, I’m gonna die out here – ”

It was Bucky.

Bucky was here.

Why?

Steve steadied himself on the edge of his desk, and then walked the looping path around his books and the coffee table and the stacks of art materials, heading for his front door.

Snow frozen on Bucky’s eyelashes, snow on the shoulders of Bucky’s parka, snow left in conscientious piles on either side of the welcome mat. “I didn’t want to track Brooklyn in with me,” Bucky said through chattering teeth. “And also I brought you food.”

Steve looked him up and down. “You’re not carrying anything.”

“It’s in my coat, you mook, now let me in before I end up becoming an icicle stuck to your front door.”

“What even are you doing here,” Steve began, and then he gave the words up as a lost cause and stepped aside.

“If you don’t want me here I can always turn around and go to Peggy’s.”

Steve made a face, and yanked Bucky in, and Bucky’s sleeve was pierced through with cold.

“Thanks,” Bucky said. He was looking around. “Can I borrow a blanket?”

“Help yourself,” Steve said, and picked his way back to his desk. “You’re lucky I’d put my brush down,” he said over the sound of Bucky pulling his coat off. “Don’t want to think about mucking this cartoon up.”

“You’re welcome. Burgers?”

Steve looked up. A paper bag on the kitchen counter, and Bucky had the roll of kitchen towels out, and he was cramming French fries into his mouth by the handful, seemingly not caring about how limp the potatoes were. 

Steve’s stomach rumbled.

Bucky’s eyes narrowed. “When was the last time you ate?”

“I don’t know,” Steve said, honestly, and he watched Bucky sigh, and roll his eyes. “Sorry. Busy.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t complain, if you’re working and it keeps you alive, I don’t know, but I worry about you, okay, you know that, right?” 

Instead of answering, Steve took the paper sack that Bucky was holding out in his direction. Three burgers inside. It seemed like only moments passed between unwrapping the first one and putting the empty wrapper aside, and Steve reached for the next burger, and forced himself to eat that one slowly. 

“Fries?” Bucky asked.

Steve wiped mayo off his mouth with a kitchen towel, and finished the second burger off in two more bites. “No, you know I don’t like them when they’ve gone cold.”

“More for me.”

When the food was gone and they were washing their hands side by side at the sink, Steve said, “I don’t know what made you think you’d go out for burgers and fries in this weather, but – thanks.”

An easy smile. “Don’t thank me, seriously, I don’t know why I did it – I could be home now and warm, right?” Bucky said, fluid shrug and fluid grace as he crossed to the couch. “But I put the phone down after talking to my editor and I thought I was hungry. Fucking polar vortex be damned.”

That made Steve laugh. “God help whoever gets between you and your food.”

A deeply amused snort. “I gotta eat. No energy means no writing.”

“You can use my computer if you like,” Steve offered as he headed back to his desk. “It’s all traditional art for me this week.”

“Hence the ink. Show me?”

“It’s not much yet.” Steve unpinned the thick sheet from his desk and held it up for Bucky’s inspection.

“Ink and squiggles.” But Bucky’s eyes were wide and rapt.

“Like I said, not much yet.” Steve wanted to blush, wanted to hide the cartoon-in-the-making away, and yet he couldn’t move: it was like Bucky was studying _him_ , too.

“I want to see it when it’s done,” Bucky said.

Steve nodded, and put the sheet back on his desk, and he made to sit down, but some impulse made him pick up one of the space heaters instead – carefully, with the blanket he was still wearing around his shoulders, so that he wouldn’t scorch his fingertips – and join Bucky on the couch. 

“Steve,” Bucky began, but Steve smiled and sat down next to him, and put the space heater down where it could warm his feet and Bucky’s.

He put his head on Bucky’s shoulder, and closed his eyes.

“Steve,” he heard Bucky say again, and then he felt Bucky’s arm around his blanket-clad sweater-wrapped shoulders. A soft touch against his hair. 

“I’m glad you’re here,” Steve said, quietly. “Though maybe in the future will you please call me so I can come and get you, because I really don’t like the thought of you walking around in that fucking storm.”

“Noted,” was Bucky’s equally hushed reply.

There was something in Steve that wanted to fall asleep, that wanted to shelter in the half-circle of Bucky and the solid safe presence of him – but there was also something in Steve that wanted to stay awake, that wanted to remember this. The two of them together, huddled for warmth, blankets and Bucky’s ridiculously pink-and-neon-green socks and the space heater humming happily. The snow building up in heaps outside his window, and the faint scents of mothballs and ink and the greasy ghosts of soggy French fries.

A quiet breath from very close by, and then: “Steve.”

Steve blinked. Whispered back. “I thought you were sleeping.”

“I wanted to,” Bucky said. “But – we’ve done this over and over again. We’ve never been awake next to each other before. I kind of wanted to experience it.”

“You’re reading my mind,” Steve said. If that was awe creeping in around the edges of the words, if those were love and need and that certain stomach-swoop wildness, the dizzying mix of being safe and being untethered, he let them: because maybe this was the right time for them to be telling each other these things, in snowbound whispers and blankets piled up in drifts.

“Am I? Then can I do this?” And Bucky was shifting, one hand coming up to cup Steve’s cheek.

Steve smiled, and held his breath, and kept his eyes open: and he watched Bucky blink determinedly and keep looking at him, and that was how they kissed for the first time. Eyes wide open, and he thought he could feel Bucky’s pulse in his fingertips, and so Steve thought it seemed natural, when that kiss came to its gentle end, to turn his head and kiss Bucky’s hand – the quiet steady warmth of him.

When he looked back there were tears in Bucky’s eyes. 

Steve’s hand shook as he reached for Bucky and pulled him close. “Why are you crying?”

“Because I love you, I think I’ve always loved you, I went away and I didn’t know why I had to come back until you met me at Grand Central Station and we hadn’t even spoken one fucking word to each other in _years_ but you were there, you showed up, just because I called you on fucking impulse, just because I didn’t want to come back to Brooklyn alone.” 

Steve thought, and didn’t have any words in him, only the impulse that made him kiss Bucky again: and this kiss was hunger and desire, this kiss was curiosity sharpened to the utmost point and blade and hilt of sweetness, this kiss was _him_ and it was _Bucky_ : days running in the Brooklyn streets and nights whispering secrets and the inexorable march of second into minute into hour, love building its citadels and its walls, within which were their willing needing hearts.

He was on his back, and Bucky was bent over him, and now Steve could close his eyes: now he could give permission, now he could let Bucky in.

Salt on skin. Space-heater warmth and the beautiful burn of Bucky’s hands on him, imprinting. Need made them clumsy, clutching, and they made love to the rhythm of incipient bruises and apologetic laughter.

In the aftermath he kissed three words into the curves of Bucky’s mouth, and he was no longer cold.

**Author's Note:**

> I am also on [tumblr](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/).


End file.
